Lynn Hoffman

Making it the Easy Way

People in the food and drink business like to talk about how hard their business is. Teachers (and textbook authers) agree: after all, if it weren’t difficult, why would anyone need us? So it’s refreshing to be reminded from time to time that the business doesn’t always have to be a struggle and that it’s possible to build a beautiful life around it.

In 1953, a young Italian orphan named Cosmo Fospero bought a dilapidated builiding and the bar on the ground floor. The sign outside the bar said Sam’s and even though the place eventually became known for its new owner, Cosmo never changed the sign. “It’s too expensive”, he explains.

Geneva is a college town and within a few years, Cozzie’s had built up a small following of college students and locals. His customers weren’t the regular college types and they weren’t the usual small-town folks either. The crowd at Cozzie’s on a weekend night was always a bit, shall we say, off-center.

I use the word ‘crowd’ advisedly. The bar was always full, hardly ever packed. A few years after he opened the bar, he shut down the kitchen- “A pain in the neck” -and replaced it with a few loaves of bread and some pepperoni. Hungry? He ‘d cut you a piece of each. Nobody seemed to mind.

If the bar wasn’t busy, Cozzie would ask a newcomer’s name. he’d chat for a bit, then maybe make an introduction. If you were a college kid, he was likely to introduce you to a mechanic from the water department. If you worked at a garage, you’d likely be talking to a professor of anthropology. Being accepted at Cozzie’s meant handling the experience well.

Cozzie’s glassware could be politely described as assorted. Sometimes on a busy night, he’d run out and if you insisted on a glass, he’d suggest that you wash one in the bar sink. He didn’t make mixed drinks beyond a few well brands with soda or juice. Most of the business was in bottled beer. The general rule was that, if you were a regular, you walked in, got your beer from the case and kept track of what you owed. Cozzie figures that over the years, a few people took advantage of him, but many more overpaid. (incidentally, academic research on ‘honor system’ billing bears him out)

The place was deliberately obscure. There was no phone number listed. There was a pay phone on the wall and its number had been obscured with tape. You had to have been there a few times before anyone would tell you the number. People who were mean or quarrelsome were asked to leave. He also gladly ejected people who seemed to be slumming or people he just didn’t like. If he was moved to pick up the guitar and sing, he didn’t serve anybody at all until he was done singing. Cozzie didn’t advertise, but because he felt an obligation to the college students who supported him, he took space in college student organization publications. His ad read:

Grade school, High school, College
Prices now stabilized.
Illiteracy prices still tend to fluctuate.

That was it. No address, no phone, no hours. If you knew, you knew. There was another motto posted over the bar.

We don’t cater to weddings or bar mitzvahs.
In fact, we don’t cater to anybody.

With a minimum of maintainence, no employees and a customer attitude that violated everything you’ve ever learned about service, Cozzie kept a thriving business going for over fifty years. A visit to the bar in 2005 found it covered with post cards from ‘alumni’, people who felt that they may have graduated from the college across town, but that they got their real education at Cozzie’s.

Keys to success

• Marketing: Cozzie’s was a place with a tough, rejecting exterior and a warm fuzzy inside. It made the customer feel that he or she was part of a club-the little clan who know how to navigate

• Crowd control: Cozzie simply didn’t serve people who weren’t pleasant to other people. So the level of social anxiety was very low. Even if a customer didn’t know a soul in the bar, she knew she was among friends.

• No labor costs: having no employees also meant that Cozzie never had to worry about employee theft.

• Minimal overhead: Cozz owned the building and his maintaince was restricted to what was mechanically necessary. Aside from an occasional coat of paint, no cosmetic maintainence was done.

• Minimal inventory: Cosmo understood that he was not selling drinks. The line of bottle that you see in the photos was his whole distilled spirits inventory. There was one reach-in filled with beer and a jug of red wine.

Cozzie's is still there. You can check it out at:

Portrait: Cozzie’s
26 Tillman St.
Geneva, New York

for more about the business of beer, check out: The Short Course in Beer by Lynn Hoffman